Institute of Contemporary Arts

In 1986, Edward Said and Salman Rushdie sat down to talk at the ICA. Professor Said launched his book “After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives” at the ICA and discussed his and the collective Palestinian identity, exile, return and the right to return.

Assembling cinematic sequences shot in the Southeastern Urals and in Macedonia, archival footage and animation, Eurasia (Questions on Happiness) sets forth on a journey towards the Eurasian steppe where it meets the New Silk Road. Imagining a fractured continent in the thrall of self-learning data sites that trigger world events, the film confronts various forms of hoax, from cut and paste political doctrines to neo-classical facade architectures. Mapping ideological and political currents that are presently unraveling the European Union, Eurasia describes fake news as a man-made proxy of the indifference that an artificial intelligence may feel toward the human condition. Through modes of science fiction, documentary, and folk tale, Eurasia creates an immersion within layers of media production, wrapping facts in fictions, and fictions in facts.